The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is You
by analine
Summary: All of Sam's lines of reasoning end up in the same place, and that place is Dean.


**Title:** The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is You  
**Pairing:** Sam/Dean  
**Warnings/Spoilers**: none; spoilers through early S3  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Word Count: **~4,200

**Notes**: This is a fluffy get-together, set early in S3, after Sam finds out about Dean's deal. It's also my first actual Wincest fic, and I'm really pretty excited that the boys managed to get themselves together properly here. \^o^/ Comments/thoughts are always greatly appreciated :)

* * *

They're in a stupid bar in some no-name town in Ohio, just over the Pennsylvania border. Bad beer, and bad music on a bad sound system, as per usual.

The bars Dean picks when he's looking to hook up are rarely ones that Sam would choose to frequent on his own, but he goes with his brother when he asks anyway, every single time. Even though it usually means he ends up folded into some booth on his own, nursing lukewarm beer all night while he waits for Dean to finish hitting on whatever hot piece of ass he's decided to set his sights on for the night.

Tonight is no exception, and Sam sips his beer slowly, making it last as he watches Dean flirt shamelessly, all eyelashes and coy smiles, with a pretty brunette across the room.

In hindsight, it seems like a no-brainer that Dean would avoid the topic of his crossroad's deal like the plague, but it'd taken a while. At first, Sam had expected, I don't know, a little more soul-searching, maybe, on his brother's part. He thought maybe they'd have the kind of heart-to-heart talks people normally have with their family members after they find out they have a year to live.

But this was Dean, and there'd been none of that. He's not sure if Dean is pissed off, or scared, or just relieved to have pulled off the deal at all – he suspects all of those things to a certain extent, but you'd never know it to look at him.

Instead, Dean just comes off as kind of horny. And reckless, more so than usual. Sam's not even sure why he's surprised.

That whole light at the end of the tunnel crap had freaked him out pretty good though. Cold blood in his veins and a bad, bad taste in his mouth that he still can't quite shake. And nothing has really felt right since.

And so he guesses that at the very least, he can let Dean blow off some steam, if that's what's going to get him through this.

Dean's got the pretty brunette hanging off his arm when he stops by Sam's table an hour or so before closing time.

"So, uh, I was thinking of showing…"

"Candy," the brunette supplies helpfully.

"Yeah, Candy, I was thinking of showing her the motel room for a while, so…"

"Yeah, okay, whatever. Just call me when you're done."

Dean beams.

"You're the best, Sammy," he says, and gives Sam's shoulder a squeeze as he guides his new friend with apparently the most ridiculous name in the universe towards the door of the bar.

And suddenly, Sam's really not sure how much more he can take of this.

* * *

"You do realize what you're doing, right Dean?"

"What?" Dean asks the next morning around a mouthful of pancakes.

"This is all some weird kind of coping mechanism."

"Weird kind of what?"

"Never mind. I'm just saying at least, you know, call a spade a spade. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with having fun, but…"

"But I should stop having so much fun, right?" Dean raises his eyebrows. "You know, you could join me."

Sam pauses at that. His brain short circuits a little. Just for a second.

"What?" Dean says, sipping his coffee. His freckles show off a little in the sunlight.

"Nothing, shut up," Sam says, and stares at the table top. Dean gives him a weird look.

"Look, I get it, okay? I'm being a dick. I'll stop kicking you out of the room, okay? Happy?"

_No, not really_, Sam thinks, but he just rolls his eyes, and pays the bill so that they can get the hell out of this town already.

They need a _job_, that's what they need.

* * *

They get one, of course they do. Careful what you wish for, and all that, because it's totally a close call, and it's totally a close call because Dean is a reckless asshole, and keeps going off half-cocked. Sam swears to god, he has a death wish sometimes.

And it scares the hell out of him.

So when Dean says, "C'mon, Sammy, let's celebrate," even though there's nothing to celebrate, he already knows he's going to have a really hard time turning him down.

"What exactly are we celebrating?"

"The end of the _job_, Sam, come on," and from the looks of it, Dean's already started celebrating while he was in the shower washing the blood and dirt and zombie guts out of his hair.

There's half of a six pack worth of empty beer bottles sitting on the table next to him, and Dean pops the top off another, and hands it to him, his eyes all shining and expectant and completely disarming.

A night on the town is probably already a done deal.

"Fine," Sam says.

And then he sighs and grabs for his coat.

* * *

Five hours later, Sam's drunk, and exhausted, and Dean's carrying him home, which would be embarrassing, except that Sam really doesn't care. It's Dean's fault he's drunk, anyway.

Sam doesn't even remember the last two bars Dean dragged him to. He remembers there'd been a girl at the last one though – a pretty little redhead – Dean had been making out with her in the hallway by the bathrooms. He'd seen them when he'd gone to take a leak.

He'd watched Dean's eyelashes flutter against his flushed cheeks, had seen his hands framing the girl's face, all gentle and smooth, and bone-meltingly sweet. He'd even heard Dean make a tiny moan, and then break away from her lips for a moment, panting, catching his breath. It's doing funny things to Sam's insides now, remembering that.

"Hey," he says against Dean's shoulder, as his brother practically drags him into the motel room. "What happened to that girl? The redhead. She was cute."

"Yeah, you think so?" Dean shrugs. "She was alright."

"You were _kissing _her."

Dean laughs, and it makes Sam's stomach flip a little.

"Yeah, okay, Sam, time for bed."

"You should have brought her back…"

"Uh, okay, mixed signals."

"What?" Sam says, as the room wobbles a little. He's not that worried though, because Dean's got his arm, and Dean's eyes are focused right on him.

"Nothing. I thought you were sick of me bringing chicks back to the room."

"I never said that."

"Yeah, well you were thinking it real loudly. And I know how to take a hint."

"That's not what I was thinking."

"Oh yeah, what were you thinking then?"

Sam is quiet for a second. There's something weird and kind of dangerous floating through his mind. It's powerful, like something dormant that's been unearthed from somewhere deep inside of him. He stares at Dean. Lets the thought take root for a second. And then another.

"Maybe you don't need her."

"Okay. Why's that?"

"They don't even _know _you," Sam says, feeling heat rise up from his chest. "None of those girls do. Bet I could make you feel at least twice as good as any of them."

Dean just stares at him for a really, really long couple of seconds. Sam cannot tell for the life of him what Dean is thinking. Or feeling, if he's feeling anything, and _god_, Sam thinks he wants him to be feeling something.

"Dean?"

"Go to bed, Sam," Dean says, and he just leaves him standing there, stranded, and stalks off to the bathroom.

A second later Sam hears the shower start up.

Five minutes after that he's asleep on top of the bedspread, shoes and all.

* * *

The thing about Dean, Sam thinks over coffee and eggs and a throbbing headache at the local diner the next morning, is that he practically wrote the book on burying the hatchet.

Burying anything, really. Hopes, dreams, _feelings_, all of it. Especially feelings.

And so Dean is going to pretend that neither of them remembers anything that happened last night, and that's fine, really it is. It'll continue to be fine, right up until it isn't, and because Sam's not quite sure what's going on yet anyway, he figures it's probably just as well.

Dean, of course, is all smiles. He's having pancakes and bacon again, like he has been every day for the past three weeks. He's going to clog all of his arteries and gain twenty pounds before the year is out.

Sam stares at him across the shiny black and white tabletop, feeling stupidly protective.

"You know that stuff has like three thousand calories, right?"

Dean rolls his eyes. "Are you kidding? Please tell me you don't honestly expect me to spend my last year on earth counting calories."

Sam frowns.

"What?"

"I wish you'd stop saying that. All that 'last year' crap."

"Well, it's true."

"So? That doesn't mean I need you to remind me of it every five seconds."

"Sorry," Dean mumbles halfheartedly into his coffee cup, and Sam tries to ignore the fresh ache blossoming in his chest.

* * *

On Wednesday, Dean almost dies. Again.

"Could you please stop throwing yourself at every monster we run into?"

"What, you think we should try throwing you at them instead?"

Sam sighs as he patches Dean up in their dirty motel bathroom. Dean's sitting on the toilet, drinking whiskey from the bottle, and whining every time Sam pulls the needle through his skin, and suddenly, everything about their lives seems completely and utterly ridiculous. Half of Dean's chest is covered in deep red bruises. They'll eventually turn purple and blue, and won't fade for weeks.

"Seriously, Dean," he says. "I'm getting sick of this."

And he thinks he might mean everything. Demons, ghosts, _hunting_, their entire lives, all of it.

"You and me both," Dean says, and somehow, that shuts Sam right up.

He swallows past the lump in his throat, and watches Dean's skin pull together under his fingers. He's pretty sure there was nothing else to say anyway.

* * *

Sam tells himself that there's not a single thing about their lives that isn't completely ridiculous, and completely messed up, and all kinds of wrong, so what was this one more thing.

Sam tells himself that Dean's been through a lot, that Dean deserves to be with someone who really cares about him. That this could be an okay thing, and that Dean could possibly, actually, _need _this. Or at the very least, maybe he could use it.

Sam tells himself that okay, screw Dean, maybe _he's _the one who needs this. And maybe he'll need it even more a year from now, and so he should really, really figure this out before it's too late.

Some girl from Stanford posts a thing on Facebook, one of those stupid, inspirational quotes that he usually just scrolls right past. It says, "Never regret anything, because at one point in time, it was exactly what you wanted."

Dean looks over his shoulder, and snorts. "That's the stupidest piece of advice I've ever heard," he says, and Sam kind of believes him.

But mostly, it just makes him think about what he wants. What he really, really wants. What he's wanted for a long time maybe, something that he figured would just happen someday, probably, if it was meant to happen at all, but it wasn't worth risking everything for, because he was a coward when it came to this, always had been, and because Dean was always right there. They had their whole lives, so what was the rush.

And he tells himself that maybe it doesn't matter what he needs, or what Dean needs, just that he wants this, right now. Before the year is out, before Dean is gone, before he has a whole lifetime to regret it if that's how it goes.

It has to be now.

He tells himself lots of other things, too, but that's the one that seems to stick.

* * *

Problem is, he doesn't know how to approach this at all. All the normal rules seem wrong.

And that's probably because there isn't an approach that makes sense, and there are no rules, because this is Dean. It's either continuing on like they always have, or it's risking everything on a whim, and there isn't really a whole lot in between.

It makes Sam feel reckless, and he kind of likes it.

One night, after a mind-numbingly boring day that started out with five hours of pointless research at the local library, and ends with him sitting alone in the motel room while Dean repeatedly fails to answer his phone while staking out some potential victim, Sam just decides. Fuck it. It's going to be tonight.

"Did you forget how to answer your phone?" he says, when Dean finally walks through the motel room door.

Dean blinks. "Oh. Sorry. I think the battery died. What'd I miss?"

"Nothing." Sam shakes his head. "The library was a total bust."

"Yeah, same here."

Sam sighs. "Look, Dean, I've been thinking…"

"That can't be good," Dean says, predictably.

"I know everything's kind of weird right now, with this deal, and—"

"Weird, how? I'm having a great time," Dean says, and Sam kind of wants to hit him.

"Yeah, I know, but I'm not."

"Okay…"

"Dean, this is going to sound crazy."

"Yeah, I'll bet. Try me."

Sam blinks. Dean's standing there in front of him, like he has a million times before. He looks relaxed, calm, curious, amenable, even. And so Sam sticks with the plan, imagines Dean looking this same way - calm, totally fine, not freaking out at all - _after _he says what he's going to say, tries to imagine the outcome he wants, power of positive thinking and all of that, and just says it.

"I want you to kiss me."

Dean's face does a kind of weird double-take without actually moving.

"Excuse me?"

"I want you to kiss me. Right now," Sam says again, and takes a step closer.

"Um, no," Dean says, and takes a step back.

"What do you mean, 'no'?" Sam asks, genuinely surprised, because he wasn't really expecting this.

"What do _you _mean, Sam? What the hell is your problem?"

"I don't have a problem, Dean, I just…"

"Just what?" Dean's eyes are a little wild now, though he makes a show of tilting his head up at Sam like he's talking to a child, or maybe an insane person. Sam kind of expects him to ask if he's off his meds, and then Dean just says, "Wait." And his eyes narrow. "Does this have something to do with the other night?"

"Maybe?"

"Seriously, Sammy. What the fuck." And Dean actually looks a little hurt.

"I just thought that maybe…" Sam pauses – Dean is watching him, and there's a mean, dangerous look in his eyes now. Sam shuts his eyes for a second to block him out. "I just thought that if this is what you need, to be with someone, then… I could do that. I could be that person."

"And that means what, exactly? What would you do?"

"Everything," Sam says. "Whatever you want."

"Are you offering yourself to me? Is that what this is?"

"I don't know, Dean. Do you want me to?"

"Do I want you to…" Dean rubs a hand over his face like he's trying to wake up. "Do you think this looks like what I want?"

Sam isn't sure about that. At all. This whole thing is kind of way outside the scope of the project right now. He's not sure why he didn't consider that it might end up this way, but… He really hadn't considered it. He's also really, really bad at arguing with Dean.

He takes a deep breath, and tries again. "I don't know. Is it?"

"No," Dean says. "Not like this."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't think it's what you really want."

"Okay, what do you think I want?"

"I don't know. But I know it's not this."

"How do you know that?"

Dean is quiet for a long time. Many, many seconds that tick away between them, and it allows Sam to catalogue every bend and crease of his body like he's never going to see him again, as if he hasn't already done that a hundred thousand times already, as if that ever helped anything at all.

"I don't," Dean says finally, and then he's gone. Just grabs his keys and his coat, and he's out the door.

* * *

So maybe he'd gone about this in the wrong way, Sam admits.

It's four in the morning, and Dean's not back yet, but Sam's not really expecting him, not for a while, anyway - sober light of dawn and all of that.

Dean is a big fan of the morning after.

And Sam should probably just let that happen. A quick moment where they laugh this all off and move on to bigger and better things and never speak of any of it again. That's what Dean will want to do, and Sam should most definitely just let it happen.  
So he'd tried something, and yeah, it was kind of a big something, but it hadn't worked and that was probably in everyone's best interests. Scratch that. Not probably. _Obviously_.

But there's this thing, this feeling Sam has, like he's on the cusp of something really, really big, and it doesn't feel like the world's ending, like it probably should. Not even close. It feels kind of like something's finally slotting into place, like the stars are aligning overhead, like maybe this is how he's going to escape his fate, and even if Dean doesn't realize it yet, that this is absolutely what he wants, he _will_. And then everything will be fine. He knows that none of this makes any sense at all, and that even if it did, it wouldn't change the fact that in a year, Dean's going to be _gone_, but he just can't shake it.

All of his lines of reasoning end up in the same place.

This isn't a mistake. Or something he's going to regret for the rest of his life. Or a misguided attempt to hold on to something that's inevitably going to end, like everything else.

This isn't any of those things. Sam's not sure what it is, exactly, but he knows what it's _not_, and he thinks he knows what he has to do.

* * *

At some point, he falls asleep for an hour or two, and when he wakes up, Dean is back.

Sam can tell before he opens his eyes, before Dean even makes a sound, like the air in the room has rearranged itself around a Dean-shaped pocket of space, and Sam's the only one who can feel it.

Dean's just sitting there, kind of hunched over in the chair by the door. He's wearing his coat and his shoes, and looks like he hasn't slept in about a month.

"Morning," Sam says, pushing himself up on his elbows, and Dean just kind of grunts, and doesn't look up. "When'd you get back?"

"While ago," Dean says, barely audible.

"Why are you still wearing your coat?"

"Because I'm not sure when I'm leaving again and I want to be ready, okay?" Dean snaps, and Sam thinks _huh, okay_, because he hadn't been expecting this, either.

"Where did you go?"

"Nowhere," Dean says. "Just driving. Glad to see you got some sleep though," he says, heavy on the sarcasm.

"So, do you want to-"

"Talk about last night? Yeah, Sam, I really do."

And then Dean stands up, and crosses the room, and before Sam knows it, he's sitting across from him on the other bed. The room is on the smallish side, and amount of negative energy hovering between them in what has to be about three feet of space between the beds is pretty impressive.

"You need to tell me what's going on with you," Dean says, grinding out the words slowly, carefully.

"Nothing is 'going on' with me, Dean, I-"

"So what, this demon chick put you up to this? Some kind of spell you have to seal with a…" Dean pauses, looking uncomfortable. "You know, what you asked for. Last night."

"What?"

"Did she put you up to this?" Dean asks, slowly, his eyes wide. "Or maybe that's not even you in there."

"Jesus, Dean. No one put me up to anything," Sam says, and Dean is reaching into his jacket pocket. "What are you doing?"

"Just making sure you're telling the truth," Dean says, and a second later, Sam's jumping up from the bed in surprise, and blinking holy water out of his eyes, and Dean's standing there in front of him, looking confused.

"Surprise," Sam says, spreading his hands out and offering Dean a helpful smile. "It's just me."

"Well, fuck. Sorry," Dean says, and then pauses for a second. "No, actually, I take that back. What the hell is going on?"

A few minutes ago, Sam might have had an answer for that, but now he's got holy water up his nose, and dripping off his chin, and he's kind of not sure anymore.

"I don't know," he says, and Dean rolls his eyes. "What? It's the truth, okay?"

"Yeah, okay, whatever."

Then Dean sighs, and squares himself up in front of Sam, really defensive, like he's bracing for something big.

"You weren't drunk last night," Dean says finally.

"No."

"I wasn't drunk last night, either."

"I don't think so, no."

"And," Dean starts, with a big fat question mark in his eyes, "this doesn't have anything to do with the demon."

"No. Nothing to do with demons or hell or your stupid crossroads deal or anything else."

"Okay," Dean says, looking a little helpless, but not one-hundred-percent hostile anymore, and that's the moment where Sam just leans in and kisses him.

It starts out close-mouthed and kind of tentative, but after a second Sam's got his hands fisted up in the collar of Dean's jacket and he's walking them back up against the wall, doing this right, like he'd imagined. Then he runs his tongue across the seam of Dean's lips, and parts them, and Dean's hands are pressing up against his neck and his chin and his cheek, angling his face so that their noses don't bump together quite as much. Dean is definitely, positively, kissing him back, and Sam thinks his heart might be trying to leap out of his chest, he's so damn happy. And relieved. Elated, really. The level of sheer, unadulterated _joy _that he's feeling in this moment surpasses pretty much everything, ever.

"Mmm," Dean mumbles appreciatively, against Sam's lips, and it feels like poetry, like some kind of crazy, heartfelt declaration that's been years in the making.

"Yeah," Sam whispers, drinking it in, Dean's moist breath on his lips, on his nose.

And then Dean laughs, and it ripples between them until Sam is laughing too, like all of this is the most hilarious thing in the world, even though of course it's _not_, not at all, but he's laughing so hard he's got tears in his eyes. And then Dean drops his head against Sam's shoulder and just keeps it there for a second. His hands are hanging loosely around Sam's waist, just resting on his hips like they belong there, and then Dean looks up at him.

"This is completely different than me bringing a chick back from the bar, you know that right?"

"Yeah, well…"

"I mean, you know that they don't matter at all, and that this is the complete opposite of something that doesn't matter, right?"

"Yeah," Sam says, "I know," and then he presses his lips to Dean's mouth again, to stop his heart from leaping out of his throat, and he drags his tongue all over everything he can find - Dean's teeth, the roof of his mouth, his tongue, and when Dean moans, deep in his throat, and Dean's hand on the back of Sam's neck flexes and tightens, and pulls him a little closer, Sam nearly loses his mind. Nearly.

Eventually they end up on the bed, which is much more comfortable, and makes it a lot easier for Sam press himself against as much of Dean as possible, all at once.

They stay like that for a long, long time, and the whole thing is breathless and sloppy and ridiculously good - the best, as if Sam had ever thought it would be anything less.

"This is not going to make hell any easier," Dean says, sounding a little delirious, his lips swollen and red, his face flushed. "I mean, it's really, _really _not going to help at all."

"I know," Sam says, and his heart swells a little more.

He locks their mouths together, and then hikes one hand up and under Dean's shirt, incredibly grateful for the fact that Dean had lost his jacket on the way to the bed. He feels Dean shudder, and suck in a breath against his lips as he presses his hand against Dean's perfect, perfect skin.

"On the up side," Dean says, tugging their hips together, and there's a big, stupid smile on his face that lights up the entire _universe -_ it's like a goddamned beacon.

"This is going to be the most awesome year _ever_."

**end**


End file.
